I cover the video game industry, write about gamers, and review video games.
You can follow me on Twitter and hit me up there if you have any questions or comments you'd like to chat about.
Disclosure: Many of the video games I review were provided as free review copies. This does not influence my coverage or reviews of these games.
I do not own stock in any of the companies I cover. I do not back any Kickstarter projects related to video games. I do not fund anyone in the industry on Patreon.

The short answer is yes, absolutely. The long answer is a bit more complicated (as long answers tend to be.)

Halo 4 is a game that should appeal enormously to fans of the series and to newcomers alike.

It doesn’t do much to rock the boat, but what 343 Industries set out to accomplish—to reboot the series now that Bungie is no longer at the helm and make it seem at once fresh and familiar—they’ve achieved hands down.

Master Chief Is Back

Story-wise, Halo 4 introduces a new ancient evil, bringing a much-needed shift in conflict, adding a mysterious and powerful new foe to the picture. And while the story itself is far from remarkable, it’s as solid as any of its predecessors and much better paced than most of them.

Combine that with good voice-acting and terrific looking visuals in both the gameplay and the cinematics, and you have a strong (if too brief) solo campaign.

I would have liked more depth in the story—Halo desperately needs more politics and intrigue to flesh out the human side of the equation—but the game stays true to the more simplistic narrative that’s defined the series, leaving room around the edges for spin-offs and expanded Halo universe fiction, comics, and so forth.

Certainly we’ve seen the stage set for the continuation of the series into the next-generation of console hardware.

Guns and Glory

New “Promethean” weapons add to the somewhat stale arsenal and they’re actually really cool (though not necessarily more powerful.)

Promethean weapons piece together when picked up, and the animations and new colors—a fitting spread of Autumnal oranges, reds, and yellows to compliment the mostly blues and purples and greens of earlier games—really adds to the game’s visual lushness and immersive quality.

Speaking of lushness, the environments here are among the best ever on the Xbox 360 (or any console for that matter) and certainly this is the best looking Halo game by far. The three-dimensional landscapes are gorgeous, even if your sight-seeing is rudely interrupted by aliens at every turn.

It’s not perfect by any means, and for anyone who isn’t a fan of the series already Halo 4 isn’t going to change your mind.

I haven’t noticed many bugs yet, making this one of the more polished releases in a while—a thankful departure from some recent releases like Assassin’s Creed III which were at times unplayable thanks to all the glitches.

And if you’re out to kill aliens, recently released XCOM: Enemy Unknown—though not a shooter—was a more engaging and addictive game, even if I am admittedly comparing apples to oranges.

Next week the competition heats up further with the release of Call of Duty: Black Ops 2.

Warts and All

So far, Halo 4′s one real flaw is that the solo campaign can get a bit repetitive.

Perhaps I’m simply spoiled on games that give me choices and divergent paths, but the linearity of Halo 4′s story and progression was a bit of a let-down despite not expecting anything else.

The second problem with the solo campaign is the same problem Halo has faced across multiple games: the enemies are simply not diverse enough. In fact, Halo shares this problem with many if not most first-person-shooters out there, and with many other games as well.

Wave after wave of the same few badguys can become tedious—which is really a shame because the Halo 4 AI is among the best in the genre, and the new enemies with their Watchers and their sneaky teleportation maneuvers are actually pretty excellent additions to the game.

Of course, the real meat of the Halo series is the multiplayer. We’ll talk about that in Part Two of this review.

Post Your Comment

Post Your Reply

Forbes writers have the ability to call out member comments they find particularly interesting. Called-out comments are highlighted across the Forbes network. You'll be notified if your comment is called out.

Comments

The hype doesn’t really bother me, as I have pretty much ignored hype for some time now.

It must be tough playing through the game on single player though, I always thought multiplayer was the way to go, the ironman challenges on older halo games were some of the best 4 player co op moments I have had in gaming.

Though I have long since decided that the price of xboxlive subscription is not worth in when there are so many other alternatives, so I will not be purchasing it.

You know, on sort of an off note, It be nice to view a halo game from a different perceptive than a soldier or super-soldier with cybernetic implants and such.

The Setting to Halo is by far more interesting than the story of the main Halo games. A lot of the EU and Easter eggs in the game show glimpses of a much more compelling and intriguing tale from behind the scenes.

Personally, I think being an ONI agent dealing with the UNSC politics could be interesting in a more deus ex kind of shooter (maybe not in an RPG way but having the story more complex than ‘shoot this guy and blow up that alien thingy.’) Or possibly even something during the Forerunner Era.

This is kind of what ODST tried to do, and it turned out pretty well. Maybe not the level of politics you are talking about, but a cool kind of non-linear approach to telling a linear story and kind of a noir Blade-Runner-esque kind of feel. Halo has always aimed to be a linear shooter with a cool story set in a very cool universe, so I don’t want that to stop, but Ideally yeah – you could make pretty much any type of game in this universe. As far as the Forerunners – I think we will learn a lot more about them in Halo 4.

How long is the solo campaign? I really feel that most first person shooter’s are ripping you off by releasing a completely new game for 5-7 hours of new campaign.

Most first person shooter stories are pretty weak in all honesty, with the main attraction being multiplayer. So you are typically justifying 60 dollars for a new title, while you get about 7 hours of new story, 4-5 new maps, a couple new weapons and maybe a new game mode. This sounds like DLC to me, or an expanion.

Dark souls just released Prepare to Die edition that has roughly 10 hours of new gameplay, spells, gear, and a new pvp system. If From Soft tried to release this as a whole new game called Dark souls 2… I don’t think it would go over so well. So why is it that it is okay for Call of Duty, Halo and other First person shooters to do this?

Im not sure where you get 4-5 new maps at. H4 has 9 new maps, with only one remake(which is still a little low imo). Im not sure about other shooters though. Also halo has a strong story, more so if you read the books.

To answer your last question, they are allowed to do this because people buy them. Strongest statement you can make is to not buy it.

Well my point was not directed at Halo 4 individually, but AAA FPS titles in general (which includes halo). Why is it okay for a FPS game to release a separate title, while in another genre this would only qualify as DLC or expansion?

Yes, people buy them, I get that. I am just curious why they do. I personally admit to buying CoD MW2, black ops, and MW3. At MW3 I realized that I am being ripped off. It is several hours of new campaign, several new maps, and balancing (add weapons, remove weapons, balance perks/damage). None of the changes seem significant enough to warrant a new entry. Seems like they could be DLC/expansions to the previous title.

I get it, when there is significant graphical upgrades (like MW1 to MW2 or Halo 2 to Halo 3) or there is a jump to next gen console (halo 2 to halo 3). But Halo and CoD just seem to be fragmenting their population of each title with these rapid releases, CoD being a larger offender.

Counter Strike released Global Offense and it is a about the same upgrade from Counter Strike Source as MW3 is to MW2. There is a 45 dollar difference in the cost of the games though.

I am just curious why there limelight AAA FPS like Call of Duty and Halo are able to get away with this? People buy them… I am just asking why?

That was a really good, fair review; I much prefer when a reviewer is like you and goes through both the positive and negative aspects of the game. Personally, the linear campaign doesn’t bother me as long as the story is well told so I’m fairly excited for Halo 4. In fact, if I had the extra money right now I’d probably consider picking Halo 4 up despite my game buying rule, but with Christmas coming up I really should be careful about what I spend. I actually got the game buying rule from one of my coworkers at DISH after being seriously let down by Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Now I don’t buy a game without first thoroughly being able to play-test it. So I rent all my games through DISH’s Blockbuster @Home first, that way if I don’t like it, I don’t feel like I just wasted sixty bucks. It’s saved me a lot of money in the past six months or so. I’m sure I’ll end up buying Halo 4 no matter what, just to have it in my collection, but for now I’m putting it in my Blockbuster @Home queue so I’ll get to play it soon.